This is a continuation of a remarkable thread that has now received 10,000 comments running to well over a million words. Unfortunately its size has become a problem and this is the reason for the move.
The history of the New Statesman thread goes back to December 2007 when Dr David Whitehouse wrote a very influential article for that publication posing the question Has Global Warming Stopped? Later, Mark Lynas, the magazine’s environment correspondent, wrote a furious reply, Has Global Warming Really Stopped?
By the time the New Statesman closed the blogs associated with these articles they had received just over 3000 comments, many from people who had become regular contributors to a wide-ranging discussion of the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, its implications for public policy and the economy. At that stage I provided a new home for the discussion at Harmless Sky.
Comments are now closed on the old thread. If you want to refer to comments there then it is easy to do so by left-clicking on the comment number, selecting ‘Copy Link Location’ and then setting up a link in the normal way.
Here’s to the next 10,000 comments.
Useful links:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
The original Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs thread is here with 10,000 comments.
Brute 2724
Sea levels are by no means even, but I suspect this has been translated incorrectly, the guy mnisquoted or else the laws of gravity have been suspended as regards the deviation from the average.
Tonyb
Brute
I can’t add anything to what TonyB wrote on the sea levels. The “gravity / density story” sounds fishy – but who knows? The “different local impacts from winds and currents” sounds reasonable to me.
The biggest “smoke and mirrors” we’ve had on sea levels (as TonyB can confirm in more detail) is the shift from one measurement method (tide gauges) over one scope (selected sea shores) and time period (prior to 1993) to a totally different method (satellite altimetry) over another totally different scope (all of the ocean except coastlines and polar regions, which cannot be measured) over another time period (after 1993) – and, even worse, that IPCC has used this “cobbled together” record to claim acceleration in the rate of rise from the earlier to the later time period (where there really is none, if the consistent method and scope are used).
The “it’s getting colder because it’s getting warmer” article is pure BS, as far as I am concerned, because it defies the laws of thermodynamics.
Max
WikiLeaks cables reveal how US manipulated climate accord
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/dec/03/wikileaks-us-manipulated-climate-accord
Brute
To me, the biggest surprise in the WikiLeaks revelation of the current US administration’s “dirty dealing” in “climate politics” is not that it’s happening, but that The Guardian is reporting it.
Maybe our UK posters will have something to say about that.
Max
Max and Brute,
You seemed to have got hold of the wrong end of the stick with the Guardian article on the Wikileak of US Govt cables.
Yes, the US government is trying to manipulate Governments by seeking “dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming”.
What approach would that be be? Nothing not much at all would seem to be a fair summary.
Sure, the US are in favour of what is known as “the accord” which was all that could be ‘agreed’, if that is the right word from the failed talks at Copenhagen.
However as the article points out “…the accord cannot guarantee the global greenhouse gas cuts needed to avoid dangerous warming. Furthermore, it threatens to circumvent the UN’s negotiations on extending the Kyoto protocol, in which rich nations have binding obligations.”
You have all possibly already seen these threads on Dr. Judith Curry’s blogsite:
Curry’s statement to the US Congressional Committee
http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/17/uncertainty-gets-a-seat-at-the-big-table-part-iv/
In this testimony, Curry stated:
Beside the key issue of “uncertainty” regarding both natural climate forcing as well as the magnitude of anthropogenic impacts, Curry discussed “winners and losers” from climate change, “plausible catastrophes with unknown probabilities” and the fact that there “are no ‘silver bullet’ solutions”.
Follow-up questions by the committee to Curry
http://judithcurry.com/2010/12/03/testimony-follow-up/
Here Curry asks for suggestions regarding specific questions addressed to her by the committee following her testimony.
Both threads are well worth reading.
Max
I’m not certain what you’re getting at Pete…..but what I get out of the leaked documents regarding the “climate negotiations” is that the entire business has nothing to do with protecting “the environment”…….It’s all about backroom deals, money, corruption, extortion and underhanded dirty political tricks…
After reading through it, I have a strong desire to take a shower……………
If I did believe that something needed to be done about “climate change”, the last people that I would want involved or running the “programs” would be these crooks and liars………
Politicians and Diplomats are one step below child molesters when it comes to morality and virtue.
Brute,
Yes you’re right but not for the right reasons.
Governments worldwide, and I’m not excluding the Australian government, are engaged in the process of ‘greenwash’. That is they have to be seen to be doing something on climate change, for electoral reasons, but they don’t want to disturb the ‘status quo’. In other words they don’t give the the energy and mining companies any grounds to cut their party donations!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing
Why should they Pete? The Met Office now concedes that “global warming” has halted, despite rising levels of CO2.
What happened to the ‘warmest year on record’: The truth is global warming has halted
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1335798/Global-warming-halted-Thats-happened-warmest-year-record.html#ixzz17Iz9ba64
Brute,
You’re offering the Daily Mail as a reliable reference?
Something wrong with the Daily Mail?
The Met Office published the data…….
Here are the numbers Pete.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/crutem3gl.txt
PeterM and Brute
“Has global warming stopped” is a question that causes “dangerous AGW aficionados” to get very defensive and slip into “denial mode”, so maybe the question should be reworded:
In his interview with Roger Harrabin at BBC, Phil Jones (former keeper of the HadCRUT record) stated that the recent surface trend showed cooling at -0.12C per decade, but that this was not “statistically significant”, because the period was too short.
“Statistically significant” or not, it is, indeed, cooling as the HadCRUT record (plus others) show.
The satellite record shows similar cooling in the troposphere.
Will the trend continue and become a new extended cooling cycle, as we saw from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s?
Or will it reverse and start warming again, as it did from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s?
No one really knows the answer to that question.
The dismal forecasting record of the UK Met Office shows us that its models are unable to forecast a year or even a season in advance, so it is foolish to believe that these models can tell us much about what is going to happen 10 or even 100 years in advance.
I’d say, “check the ‘Farmers’ Almanac’ if you want to have a better idea of future weather” (it’s “hit rate is significantly better than that of the Met Office). http://www.farmersalmanac.com/weather/2010/08/29/2011-winter-outlook-the-wait-is-over/
Max
Brute,
The numbers show that that the Earth is still warming. You can have a go at plotting a graph if you like – if you do it sensibly and take, say a running five year average, you can see that for yourself.
Just use the last column the first 12 are Monthly figures.
Surprising as it may seem to you, most of the population in Europe and Australia don’t think the entire scientific world is engaged in a conspiracy or scam and are deliberately lying about the effect of GH gas emissions.
Politicians do feel under pressure from their voters about this. For example, you may have read that the UK government has changed and that David Cameron is the new UK PM. To you David Cameron would probably appear to be a dangerous Marxist. His platform included a commitment to strengthening the NHS, improving education and acting on climate change. Many people may have disagreed, but the UK Conservative Party decided that they needed to move to the centre ground in order to win an election. And they did. Well, at least, with a bit of help from others they did.
Not quite the same story in Australia. The Labor Party were in a mess, and had reneged on promises themselves with regard to Climate issues, and the Liberals (who are really the Conservatives) probably should have won, but they didn’t. They chose a somewhat more rightish platform, on Climate and other issues, and narrowly lost.
Official under fire for traveling to Cancun UN climate junket as Scotland is ‘gripped by the worst snowfall in 45 years’
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/215750/Minister-quits-winter-ice-for-climate-junket/
Brute and PeterM
I think we all agree that the exposure of sleazy back-room political deals in an attempt to push through carbon taxes that the general public does not want, will become a major embarrassment for the culprits, just as the Climategate leaks and later revelations of IPCC lies and exaggerations were for the exposed guilty parties then (despite later internal white-wash attempts).
But are we surprised that politicians sometimes do “sleazy back-room political deals”?
Or that they use taxpayer funds to do these deals?
As far as the press (NYT) claiming the “moral high ground” last year in refusing to publish the “Climategate e-mails” because they had been “stolen” but now publishing the stolen WikiLeaks stuff, I find that very hypocritical.
But, again, are we surprised?
Max
PeterM
(I can’t believe it!) – you just wrote to Brute:
ARE YOU KIDDING?
Get serious, Peter. You are in deep denial of the facts here.
Even Phil Jones concedes that it has been cooling most recently, although he does add the caveat that this observed cooling is not “statistically significant” because the time period is too short.
Kevin Trenberth has acknowledged this cooling and called it a “travesty” (presumably for the “dangerous AGW” cause, which he supports).
So two “insider” climate scientists, who are outspoken believers in the “dangerous AGW” premise, have both conceded that the Earth is cooling and you say you believe:
Duh! What numbers, Peter? Please get specific.
I have not seen any “numbers” that “show that that the Earth is still warming” – and neither have you.
Wake up, Peter. Pull your head out of the sand.
Max
Max,
OK if you think its stopped warming show me a graph based on Brute’s data that shows this.
Just apply a five or ten year running average and any long term trends will be apparent.
But either you aren’t sufficiently good at doing this sort of thing or you don’t want to show the reality of the situation for political reasons.
PeterM
You made an interesting statement (albeit an unsubstantiated one) when you opined (2739):
Although I cannot speak for “most of the population in Europe and Australia”, I, for one, would personally agree with your statement as written.
To start off, I do not think “the entire scientific world” is in agreement that AGW, caused principally by human CO2 emissions, has been the primary cause of past warming or that it represents a serious potential threat to humanity. As we both know, there are a lot of scientists who disagree with this premise.
I also do not think “the entire scientific world is engaged in a conspiracy or scam”. (I do not even believe that there is a “conspiracy” at work here at all, but just a “collusion of interests”, as Peter Taylor put it in his book, “Chill”, and as TonyN has outlined in detail in his “convenient network” thread here.)
Nor do I believe that “the entire scientific world” is “deliberately lying about the effect of GH gas emissions”. First of all, there are a lot of scientists who disagree with the premise that “the effect of GH gas emissions” has been “the primary cause of past warming or that it represents a serious potential threat to humanity” (see above). Second, I believe that there is no evidence to suggest that those scientists who support this premise are “deliberately lying”. I have, however, concluded (based on the recent revelations and the data I have seen) that there have been deliberate misrepresentations in the IPCC reports; we have covered this point here exhaustively, so there is no point in repeating all the gory detail.
So, all in all, your statement makes sense to me (even though it is an unsubstantiated speculation).
Max
PeterM
You just wrote (2743):
Several months ago (#9150 on the earlier NS thread) I posted the graph of the HadCRUT record showing no warming since the end of 2000.
Up-dating this graph to include Jan-Oct 2010 also shows no warming since the end of 2000. I suspect the same will be true once we have data for November/December (it would take a major upward jump for both of these months to change this).
Phil Jones has agreed that his HadCRUT record shows it has cooled over this period (in his famous Harrabin BBC interview), but he has added the “caveat” that the observed cooling is not “statistically significant” (because the period is too short).
The 5-year period 2001-2005 had an average temperature of 0.444C and the most recent 5-year period (2006-2010 up through October) was 0.416C. That is 0.028C cooler than 5 years earlier.
No matter how you slice it, Peter, it has stopped warming since the end of 2000. Those are the observed data, Peter, like them or not.
Does this mean that this trend will continue for a few more years or even decades?
No one knows the answer to that question, Peter.
Max
PS I am not going to continue “flogging this dead horse” with you, Peter. It is a senseless waste of time.
Did you realise that you have been arguing this same point for OVER A YEAR now. This is the very definition of Absolute Lunacy. Give it up, all of you….
PeterM
You’ll be pleased to hear that France has just signed a multi-billion dollar deal with India to supply them nuclear power plants.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/news/2010/12/india-france-sign-deal-nuclear-power-plants
Max
Axel
I’m afraid you’re right. It is “absolute lunacy” to argue that it is warming, when the data show it is not.
And it is also “absolute lunacy” to continue debating this point, when it is long settled.
Mea culpa.
Max
Max,
Yes its settled. The data, all kindly supplied by Brute, shows it hasn’t stopped warming.